Sunday, June 8, 2014

Gitmo Taliban Detainees: Obama=5; Dubya=500+

"The Republicans have a lot to say about President Obama’s recent release of five Guantanamo Bay detainees. He is being called criminal. He’s being accused of endangering America. They’re calling for hearings to investigate his actions. All of this outrage over five men.

If the release of five men is such a crime, what about the release of close to 600? You would think that would be considered a much bigger threat to our country, but you’d be wrong. Why? Because it was done by a Republican, and they surely believe that anything they do is for the good of the country.

Between 2007 and 2009, President George W. Bush released 520 detainees from the facility at Guantanamo Bay – at least that’s how many are officially recorded. One of those detainees was Abu Sufian bin Qumu, who is a suspect in the Benghazi embassy attack.

The strangest part of this story is that despite official White House documents and news articles detailing Bush’s actions, people continue to deny that he has negotiated with terrorists. Apparently his negotiations with Iraqi insurgents, Iran and North Korea never made it into the Republican history books."

"If every soldier were brave in battle, we wouldn’t need a word for valor. Yet generals since the time of Saul have confronted the problem of breakdown and desertion. The eminent military historian John Keegan, in his masterpiece The Face of Battle, quoted U.S. military authorities who concluded after World War II that “there is no such thing as ‘getting used to combat’...Psychiatric casualties are as inevitable as gunshot and shrapnel wounds.” Some soldiers deal with the pressure by running away—or worse, by switching sides. Which is why Stalin kept a significant share of his guns pointed at the rear of his own army. When President Obama stepped into the Rose Garden on May 31 to announce..."